Wounds
by Elise May
Summary: Carla watches Nick from afar.
1. Chapter 1

**Wounds**

* * *

She's blonde.

Of course she's blonde.

Young and pretty and petite and with a laugh Carla just can't bring herself to hate. Because it's cute. This woman is cute, everything about her, from the way she hangs off his arm, like she can't bare to put distance between them. To the way she tucks her hair behind each of her ears when she is nervous and the way her eyes don't leave him for a second, as if she's scared he'll walk away from her if he catches glimpse of something (or _someone_ ) better than what she is.

Carla reckons she's right to be. She's been watching them from afar for a while now and it is sweet torture. He's happy. For the first time in over a year, his smiles are genuine and the darkness in his eyes has dimmed considerably, but it's not quite disappeared. It'll never quite disappear.

She hides behind street corners, a fugitive in her own home amongst her own people, and they're fascinating to watch. Perhaps she enjoys the pain. Perhaps she feels she deserves it. She watches her take his hand and they walk side by side, their arms swinging between them, and Carla can swallow that. They don't walk in sync. They don't entwine fingers. He would never do that to her. God, it's such a comfort to know that he still respects her, respects who she was to him enough not to replicate what they had with another woman.

The blonde as Carla has so affectionately named her does not appreciate being watched by others. She's a private person, her kisses made in secret, always pulling away from him at the earliest oppourtunity and she reminds Carla of herself in the early days. When what he had felt for her was so overwhelming to her – almost unwelcome – that she had pushed him and pushed him and pushed him until she was exhausting to be around, and yet he still stayed.

And yet she still left.

He's never able to hide how he feels, not to her. His smile is bright, but there is a sadness about him that the blonde is unable to see because all she can see and all she can concentrate on is the way they look to other people. His family are rather indifferent to her; still weary of whether he truly is coping with the absence of the woman he once told them in confidence he could not imagine his life without.

But he is without her now.

And he is coping with it.

On the surface, he is calm. On the surface, he can take someone else out for lunch and be fine in her company, be happy in it, even; that is, until something reminds him of all that he has lost and then he finds himself becoming just that. _Lost_. It doesn't take much; just the scent of one of the many perfume she once tainted his bedsheets with, the colour of the hair he used to spend hours running his fingers through, when it was just the two of them away from the outside world and it felt like maybe they could make it to forever. It is the little things that remind him of her and when they do, he is back to square one. Back to the day when he first realised she wasn't coming back and he locked himself in the bistro, smashed the place up a bit with his bare fists because it was the only way he could escape from his own helplessness.

The scars took an age to heal. A year later and Carla isn't sure whether the internal ones ever healed at all. Hers certainly haven't. Her wounds still feel open and sore and her pain is only worsened by the fact that the reason he cannot see her is because he isn't looking for her in the first place. Not any more.

She walks away before they are able to pass her. She walks away with a heavy heart, but she doesn't dare look back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Wounds**

* * *

White.

It makes her laugh to think of it now.

She remembers standing in front of the full length mirror in the backroom of the pub, watching with baited breath as Michelle's reflection put a veil over her face. To hide her modesty. To amplify her beauty. Carla remembers her own smile. She couldn't see it all through the netting; it was partial and she remembers, at the time, finding some irony in that. Because she hardly recognised herself, yet she expected Nick to want her. To want her lies and her deception and her total lack of respect for him, for their relationship.

But what is done cannot be undone and that thought is what got her down the aisle, got her to take his hand in hers, let him tell her _you're so beautiful_ and it is what allowed her not to flinch when her dirty laundry was aired in public. One by one, guilty faces flashed and increased Nick's hurt, Nick's anger.

Nick's bloody face haunted her dreams for weeks after, though she can't say she slept much. She can't say she did much at all.

Carla ran like Carla always does and Carla did always mean to come back.

But she didn't.

This time, she hid. The shame was too much; her selfishness no better. She could not face up to what she'd done, the hurt she'd caused and all that she had ruined.

She didn't come back and this is the reason why she is in Nick's girlfriend's place of work, feeling sorry for herself. Wallowing in it. Nick's girlfriend, she learns quickly by listening to the people around her, is called Melissa. And she can just hear her chirpy voice singing _call me Mel; it's Mel for short_ and Carla can't imagine ever asking a person to call her _Car_. The shortening of her name has always been a natural process, though it is not one Nick went through when they were together and that stings a little now that she is reflecting upon it.

Now, she is reflecting upon everything and nothing quite feels the same as it once did.

"Do you want another drink, love?"

She looks up into green eyes. Melissa smiles at her, wine bottle in hand. The white liquid is tempting to Carla, but not nearly as tempting as her need to say, "Nice place you've got going here."

The bar isn't busy, not as busy as it perhaps should or could be. It's in a central location and the interior design of it reminded her so much of the bistro as she left it when she entered that Carla had to stop for breath. Her chest had felt so tight. The bar is trendy, contemporary. It suits its owner, the owner who blushes at the compliment she has just received and places the wine bottle down onto the bar.

"Thanks," she says. "I like to think so."

She looks around the place a bit, pride evident in her expression.

"How long have you had it?" Carla asks.

"A couple of years." Her fingers run along the rim of the bar. "But this site is new. My boyfriend helped secure it for me. He's got contacts, you see."

She winks playfully and she isn't to know why the lost looking woman in front of her has to lower her eyes, why her hands raise to her head and she is silent for a good thirty seconds. Her not knowing does not, however, stop her from making a note of it. She waits for Carla to continue.

"Oh, right," she says and her voice noticeably shakes.

How serious must a relationship be for him to help her buy a bar? She knows the answer and she can only think of one thing.

Leanne.

The Joinery.

"He's been brilliant with the whole thing. He's invested so much into it time wise and I want to make it work, you know? For him, if nothing else." Melissa knows she is rambling, but that's just in her nature. Endearing to those who know her; an annoyance to those who don't. "Anyway, that's enough about me." And Carla decides it really is. She isn't sure her heart can take much more, isn't sure she can stop her hands with their trembling. "Tell me about yourself..." She is fishing for a name.

"Suzy," Carla replies and it's one of the easiest lies to have left her lips in a long time.

"Suzy," Melissa repeats. "Tell me about yourself."


End file.
